


Go Save the World, I'll Be Around

by AnNee



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-18
Updated: 2014-02-18
Packaged: 2018-01-12 23:05:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1203850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnNee/pseuds/AnNee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jensen is a superhero, Misha owns a super lab, Richard is a super evil genius and Jared just wants to go one week without a guy with a bad moustache and a super evil monologue trying to ruin his goddamn life<br/>Written for spn_reversebang 2013. Art by BeelikeJ and can be found here http://beelikej.livejournal.com/431033.html</p>
            </blockquote>





	Go Save the World, I'll Be Around

The thing is, Jared doesn’t believe in destiny. 

It’s not because he’s cynical or gloomy or trying to be philosophical about it. It just always seems words like _fate,_ and _destiny_ and _higher meaning_ are thrown around by people who couldn’t really be bothered to do anything with their lives. Who are just hoping to kick back and wait for love and money and happiness to fall into their laps without even having to think about it. 

And Jared isn’t lazy. 

He’s a busybody, a chatterbox; a general mischief-maker. He’s excitable and jumpy and talks way too much and way too loud. And he certainly isn’t afraid of a bit of hard work to get what he wants.

So when Jensen Ackles literally falls into his lap four days into tenth grade, Jared doesn’t quite know what to make of it. 

“Uh…sorry?” Jared tries, as the wide-eyed, fairer-haired boy scrambles off him and back onto two feet. 

Jared knows of him already, in a general, roundabout way. They share fourth period English class, but Jared’s not too sure on names yet. 

Jared is a transfer. His daddy coaches football, so naturally his family has been following him from field to field since Jared’s little sister Megan was two. It’s a double edged sword for someone like Jared, who’s been able to make friends as easy as breathing since kindergarten. Of course, the downside to that is having to pick up and leave all those friends behind when his daddy’s new contract comes in. 

He has a feeling, though, that this might be it. San Fran was the dream, after all: his daddy’s end game, the retirement package. When he finally called to tell them the job was his, they’d packed up the house and moved from Chicago within the week. His momma has even gone so far as to unpack the laundry room, so Jared is secure in the knowledge that they’re pretty much here to stay. 

That being so, he decided to take the more subtle approach in regards to school this time. High school is a big deal after all, or so he’s heard, and his parents had been kind enough to move him in at the very beginning of the year so he’s not coming in as the gawky, too-tall klutz halfway through the semester like usual. 

Accidentally losing control of his flailing limbs and knocking over a ladder in their drama class to cause a domino effect of carnage probably wasn’t as subtle as one would have hoped, however. The end result is a very startled, very pissed off Jensen Ackles, knocked from his own ladder and landing directly on top of Jared. 

“What the hell are you playing at, Gigantor? You trying to get someone killed?” 

“It was an accident?” Jared offers lamely, pulling himself vertical as well and rubbing at the new tender spot on his elbow. But Jensen isn’t really looking at him closely enough to gage his sincerity. His eyes are darting all over the place, jumping from person to pointing and giggling person until finally coming to rest on the weirdo from Jared’s third period chemistry class. 

The guy – _Collins_ , Jared’s brain suddenly provides – gives a barely noticeable nod to Jensen and a reassuring smile that Jared doesn’t really know how to decipher, but then Jensen’s turning back to him with a pat to the shoulder and a good-natured grin.

“Don’t worry about it, man. No one died, right?” 

And then he’s picking up his ladder and heading on over to where Danneel Harris and Osric Chau are bent double laughing and shouting out fake scores to their friend’s nigh-on perfect dive. 

“Right,” Jared mumbles, still rubbing his hurt elbow and wondering what the fuck just happened. 

_Fate_ , someone far lazier then Jared would probably have called it. 

Of course, Jared doesn’t believe in that sort of thing. 

 

 

“So, you’re going to Loretta’s for lunch, right? For that meeting with Drake at 1:30?” 

Jared sighs and tosses a roll of tape to one side in an attempt to see all the way to the back of the drawer without dislocating a finger. 

“Yeah, maybe. Probably…” 

Jensen sounds unconvinced in his answer and Jared hears a distinct huff of frustration somewhere behind him. “Well, either you are or you aren’t. And I mean, do you think you’ll still be going downtown this afternoon for those proofs, or…?” 

For a normal boyfriend, in a normal relationship, this kind of questioning would probably start a fight about trust issues and infidelity. 

For Jared, it’s usually a prelude for some kind of explosion and extensive nationwide news coverage, so Jared’s already suspicious that his day is going nowhere but south. He does the thing he does best at 7:45 on a Monday morning with only half a mug of coffee and no eggs in him: He snaps. 

“I don’t fucking know, Jensen!” A spool of string is hurled to the tile in the midst of his tantrum and he jams his hand further into the drawer. “Why don’t you stop asking stupid, mundane questions and help me find my fucking keys?”

A keychain is suddenly dangling in front of his eyes and Jared scowls and makes a grab for it, only to have it snatched back out of sight. 

Jensen is grinning at him when Jared finally straightens his posture. “How do you get so vulgar so early in the morning?” 

Jared’s late. Really horrifically late, and he still has to navigate two intersections and probably suffer through another three minutes of the third degree. Somehow, though, he still finds the time to appreciate how stupid-cute his boyfriend looks, sitting so sweetly on the kitchen counter in Jared’s old UCFC t-shirt with his hair all mussed up from sleep. 

“You love my dirty mouth,” Jared says, sliding between Jensen’s spread legs and pressing their lips together as he slips the keys from Jensen’s lax fingers. 

Jensen hums, reaching up to grip the hair at the back of Jared’s neck. “I like it even more when it’s reciting your day planner to me…”

Jared turns his head to the side with an exasperated sigh and feels Jensen grin against his cheek. 

“Fine! Be that way!” Jensen exclaims dramatically, sliding back and holding his hands out in mock defeat between their chests, and Jared thinks he’s got about five more years in him before this guy gives him a fucking ulcer. 

“Just have me worry! Have me go grey! And then what, huh? You gonna want to fuck a grey guy?”

“Now who’s got the dirty mouth?” Jared teases, pocketing his keys and grabbing his bag and thermos from the counter beside Jensen’s hip. 

He presses another kiss to Jensen’s frowning mouth as he slings the bag over his head. 

“And whatever it is, please try not to disrupt the subways? I have a meeting in Richmond at two.”

 

The thing about being a journalist is that sometimes you have to be kind of ruthless. 

And Jared’s a great journalist. He’s smart and inquisitive and writes like he was born to do it. 

But he’s not mean. 

It sometimes gets to be a thing. 

“Padalecki. My office. Now” 

Gen shoots him a kind of _Don’t ask at me, I have no idea_ look as he slides off his perch on her desk and saunters over to where Jeff is hanging out of his office door. 

Out of habit, he glances over to Felicia’s corner to clock her typing away furiously and looking particularly more flustered than usual. Jared knows it has nothing to do with the recent gun attack in Marina Bay. 

He could detour over and prop himself up on her desk for a spell if he wanted to. _Probe_ , the journalist in him would call it. He knows she would fold like a paper napkin. The boyfriend in him would just call it _snooping_ , though, so he doesn’t even offer her his usual acknowledging head tilt.

Jeff’s sprawled in his desk chair when Jared shuts the door and turns to him expectantly. When Jared first interviewed, it was one of things he liked about Jeff – his casual sprawl. He thought it was a quirk of his, something that they had in common; their “southern spillin’ out,” his Momma would say. 

Then, of course, he found out they had way more in common than the Kansas/Texan state line, and everything changed again. 

“Jared, you’re a damn good writer.”

Jeff’s using his patented _you’re-not-gonna-like-this_ tone and Jared doesn’t doubt it for one second. In all the years Jared’s known him, he can count on one finger the number of times Jeff has been out right _wrong_. And then, if he was feeling particularly vindictive, he’d point the finger directly at himself. 

He leans back against the closed door and musters up his best _I-ain’t-buying-what-your-selling_ eyebrow raise. “I’m the best damn writer you got.”

Jeff smirks. “And so modest. But sometimes, to do this job, you…” His face twists into something that would probably be construed as sympathy on anyone else. “Well, you just gotta put your morals to one side and do what’s gotta be done.”

Jared smirks and it _feels_ ruthless, even for Jeff’s standards. “How many times have you said that this week?” 

Jeff, as unusual, looks unimpressed. “Jared, we can’t run this piece without you naming your source. You know it, I know it – Global know it for sure; Rossenbaum, he wants a name, we’ve put him off long enough,”

Jared’s laugh is short and clipped, like his answer: “Fuck Rossenbaum. I’m not giving up my source.” 

Jeff rewards him with a steady look that’s been perfected by years of trying to get common sense out of assholes. “You do know it’s going to happen one way or another, right?” Sympathetic, with a hint of exasperation.

“I mean, I don’t have to sit you down and explain the mean and nasty ways journalists secure a story like this, do I? ‘Cause I left my fucking finger puppets at home.” Sarcasm, with a hint of asshole. 

Jared tips his head to the side and responds in kind: “I can show you one of my finger puppets, if you like?” 

Jeff saves him the one finger salute by sighing heavily and throwing down the file in his hand like it weighs fifty pounds. 

Jared gets the impression he’s kind of slowly ruining the guy’s day. 

“Look, I can’t give you it now,” he relents. Slightly. “ _Soon_. I promise.” He shrugs in what he hopes is construed as an apologetic manner. “But not now.” 

Jeff picks up a stack of papers from his desk and his tired eyes lift to pin Jared again, a thick eyebrow lifts. “I ain’t gettin’ any younger here.” 

Jared sighs dramatically, “Fine. Lesson learned. From now on, I’ll be a cutthroat assassin in the world of investigative journalism. America won’t know what hit it. Are you happy?” 

Jeff doesn’t even look up at him from the paper he’s scanning. “Ecstatic.” He shuffles it into a pile and speaks up before Jared’s fingers can wrap around the door handle. “I’ve got to step out in a minute. I’ll be gone for the rest of the day.”

Jared stares at him for a second, even though, like most things that occur in this particular office, it’s completely one-sided. 

Eventually, he nods, lowering his eyes to the floor. If Jeff’s telling him about it, it’s bad. Jared’s been around long enough to know that much. 

“Yeah, I figured.”

Jeff finally looks up, and there’s something else altogether in his eyes when he asks, “You got it covered here?”

Jared hasn’t, really – because what Jeff’s actually asking for is his approval. For what they’re about to do, for whatever boneheaded plan they’re flying off to next. 

Approval to send his boyfriend off on some life threatening crusade that he may never return from and Jared, strangely enough, has never given that as freely as he’s always been expected to. Then again, he rarely gets asked for it at all. Especially not by Jeff, because Jeff is a proud kind of guy, being southern and such, and it’s not easy for proud kinds of guys to admit when they’re wrong. Especially to the very person they were so wrong about. 

“Just make sure you got it covered there,” Jared shoots back, tugging the door open with a parting grin, “Boss.” 

 

Two hours later, Jared’s standing with Gen in front of the giant screen that takes up the whole back wall of the briefing room, watching lower Richmond be consumed by a fireball. 

The bomb had been heading headfirst for Golden Gate Park, so it could have been worse. They’re already calling the guy The Lantern, because of the way the bomb was rigged. Could have been better, Jared thinks idly, running through a thousand imaginative alliterations in his head as the blaze rages on in front of them. 

If he squints, he thinks he can just make out Chris’s cowboy hat through the smoke. 

“Any casualties?” Jared asks, his eyes almost watering as they jump from frame to frame, searching for a familiar flash of green eyes and quick hands. 

Gen checks something on her iPad and shakes her head. “None reported yet. It was a vacant lot. Strange, though; our source said the missile had originally been redirected to the empty subway station on Lincoln. Got pulled to the warehouse at the last minute, no one can tell why.” She looks up with a dismissive shrug. “Weird.” 

Jared nods and feigns ignorance as he checks his phone for his standard ‘all ok’ text. 

Maybe it’s true after all that compromise is at the heart of a healthy relationship. 

 

 

Jared wouldn’t consider himself a stalker. He’s a pretty decent guy, with a tendency to be a little overbearing at times, sure – he blames it on his momma. But he doesn’t make it a habit to learn strangers’ personal schedules. He doesn’t look at all fetching in a duffel coat and he doesn’t even own a pair of night vision goggles, so he’s always just assumed he was clear of stalker territory. 

Jensen Ackles is making him rethink things. 

“Hey,” Jensen says laughingly, coming out of the locker rooms and finding Jared leaning up against the hallway wall. “You stalking me or something?”

Jared thinks he might be, but he doesn’t know why. There’s something about Jensen that Jared can’t put his finger on, like something doesn’t quite slot into place, but he doesn’t know what. A feeling like he’s met him before, but doesn’t know when. Like there’s something Jared’s should be looking for, but he doesn’t know where.

Jared _hates_ not knowing things. 

It’s not in his nature and it’s driving him nuts. _Jensen’s_ driving him nuts. Even though he’s only spoken to the guy about three times since the ladder incident, consisting mainly of a mumbled “Hey” and an exchange of nods. 

“You wanna go for a burger or something, maybe?” Jared says suddenly, pushing himself off the wall and watching for Jensen’s reaction. 

Jared’s not shy. Not at all. He feels Jensen should learn this early on if they’re going to be friends, which they are, because Jared makes friends like breathing. Once he decides he wants to be somebody’s friend, there’s really very little they can do about it, and Jensen, well, he’s piqued Jared’s interest. 

“Uh…”

Jensen is _very_ shy. Amongst the things Jared has noted about him while resolutely not being a stalker is that Jensen Ackles is pretty adorable. 

He’s got freckles scattered over his nose that get clearer as the sun gets stronger, and he has a tendency to blush over the top of them. He blushes when he gets picked on by the teacher in class; he blushes when Misha gets particularly animated beside him in the cafeteria and everyone’s eyes swing their way; he blushes when he drops his pants in the gym. He’s blushing right now, actually. 

“What, like a…?” Jensen’s hand comes up to rub the back of his neck like he does when he’s particularly flustered (and okay, maybe Jared should really rethink his standing on this whole stalker thing).

Jared’s eyes crinkle in confusion. “Like a _burger_?” he ventures, and Jensen huffs out a laugh and drops his hand looking up to catch Jared’s gaze and there it is again, that feeling of not knowing. Jared’s skin prickles. 

“Yeah, alright,” Jensen says finally, and Jared grins, swinging his backpack up over his shoulder and leading them off down the corridor. 

“I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship, Jensen Ackles,” Jared says out loud to the empty hallway, because brain-to-mouth filtering had never been his strong suit, and Jensen barks out a startled laugh, still looking ambushed. 

It wasn’t fate, Jared thinks. It wasn’t destiny. He wanted something and he went after it. It was gut instinct, is what it was. 

And Jared’s gut had never led him wrong before. 

 

 

They get together for drinks sometimes. 

Often, actually. 

Mostly following some kind of disaster involving trains, aeroplanes, hostage situations, or gas explosions. No one ever mentions the coincidence, so neither does Jared, but he’s mentally named the get-togethers the _“Yay, no one died!”_ parties. 

It has the capacity to be awkward, really. They all know he knows, and he knows they know he knows – but still, no one mentions the details. Jared doesn’t ask. 

It’s not awkward.

It never has been, and Jared would wonder why that was if he was allowed. As it is, he just shuts up and sips his beer. 

“And then she just chucks her drink on me.” Chris is rehashing his latest encounter with a pair of particularly feisty Hooters waitresses he met in Chino, while Osric makes interested humming noises while not really listening at all and Danneel rolls her eyes so hard they’re in danger of falling right out of her head. 

“Forty dollar bourbon and the chick thinks it’s a chucking drink! I could’ve got her a fucking gin and tonic if she wanted to chuck the fucker. I mean it was her sister, it’s not like I fucked her Aunt Millie! Can you believe that shit?”

“No,” Danneel responds immediately, “what I can’t quite believe is that you can get _one girl_ to go out with you, let alone _more_ than one.” She tips the rest of her beer back and leans slightly into Jared’s side. “Don’t ever turn into that guy, baby.” She slurs slightly, but Jared knows she’s got another three or four pitchers in her. Danneel can drink Chris under the table on her lightest day and still walk to the bathroom in a straight line. She turns her wicked dark eyes up to Jared, and it’s times like these that Jared is 100% secure in the knowledge he is 100% gay.

“Promise me you’ll stay sweet forever and attempt to save your wretched species.” 

Jared shrugs good-naturedly and pats her hair down where the bright red strands have crept up his shoulder. “Okay.” 

This mollifies her enough to prop her own head up until Jensen slides back into Jared’s other side with a fresh pitcher and a bowl of stale popcorn. 

“You tryin’ to turn my boyfriend to the dark side, Harris?” Jensen smirks, tipping a healthy amount of alcohol into Jared’s half-empty glass and sliding the rest over to where Misha is attempting to stack all his empty glasses into an unstable pyramid. 

Jared shoots Jensen a side glance when he thinks he’s not looking. He does this sometimes, too; often, actually, just to check. Just to make sure he’s still there. 

Jensen is looking, of course he is, and returns a little smile. Shifts an inch closer so their thighs are perfectly aligned, all the way to the knee, and their elbows brush when they reach for their glasses. 

“He’ll never go.” Danneel sighs dramatically, and Jared’s about to retort about how tight she looked on CNN today in her little spandex suit, but a shadow falls over their booth and Jeff’s sliding in beside Chris with a grim look on his face. 

“How goes the clean up?” Jensen asks first, while Osric busies himself with pouring the last of the beer into the cleanest glass he can find amongst the mess in front of them.

“Alright,” Jeff grunts, throwing back the drink Osric passes him in two gulps.

 _Fucking Jeff._ Jared scowls into his glass and pretends not to know what the hell they’re talking about. 

They shoot the shit for a bit, about sports, about beer, and have an impromptu drink-off that leaves Danneel victorious and Misha kind of grey around the edges. 

They’re laughing when they all eventually leave the booth, Jensen’s hand a hot brand against the small of Jared’s back so he almost doesn’t feel Jeff’s hand on his elbow, stopping him from sliding past, even though he’s been expecting it all night.

“It’s gonna be a shit storm tomorrow. I need you at the front for this one, spin it best you can to take the heat off.” 

Jared nods, only once, only slightly because they all know he’d be doing it anyway.  
His eyes catch on Jensen propped on the bar by the door, waiting for him, and he shakes his arm loose from Jeff’s grip harder than was probably necessary before heading over. 

They all have a part to play – even Jared. _Especially_ Jared, most days. 

Maybe that’s why all this isn’t as awkward as it should be. 

 

 

Two months in, Jared has come to the following conclusion:

Jensen Ackles is a vampire. 

It really is the only explanation. His parents died a couple years back in a turn of events that’s never actually been fully disclosed to Jared, so Jensen lives with his uncle on Marina Bay in a house that Jared can walk him to the gate of but never go inside. 

“Uncle Jim” bears no resemblance to Jensen. Like, _at all_. And they don’t have the same last name. And while he seems like a nice enough, if abruptly upfront guy, Uncle Jim kind of ticks all of Jared’s “stranger danger” boxes.

And then there was the time Jensen acted kind of sketchy when Jared proposed he just crash at his place one night after a Godzilla movie marathon. 

In fact, Jared doesn’t think he’s ever seen Jensen between the hours of 11pm and 7am.

It doesn’t _necessarily_ mean he’s a vampire. He might just be a run-of-the-mill serial killer. 

 

 

They don’t fight nearly as much as they probably should, all things considered. 

They live together, work together most days, and have pretty demanding schedules. Not to mention the near death experiences and world-ending disasters that occur around them on a weekly basis.

When they do fight, though, it’s carnage. 

A plate flies past Jensen’s head and crashes into the wall. It was a good plate. Gen got them a matching set for Christmas last year with a fancy blue pattern on. They aren’t the most gracious of creatures, him and Jensen; between dish duty, overstocked cupboards, and screaming matches, Jared’s pretty sure that was their last one. 

It’s a shame, really, the reasons they can’t have nice things. 

“Fuck’s sake, Jared!” Jensen screams, ducking like it’s no effort at all. Which it isn’t, Jared knows, and it just pisses him off more. “Can you get a grip for two seconds?”

“I’ll get a grip around your fucking throat, you fucking rat!” He reaches out and grabs the nearest thing, which just happens to be one of their phone chargers, and hurls that as well. It’s not like he’s ever going to hit him. Even if Jared wanted to hurt him, he never would be able to; not really. But statistically, Jared’s bound to finally smash something belonging to Jensen that might just piss him off. 

It’s petty, sure, but welcome to Jared’s life. 

Jensen blocks the charger with his arms but it gets tangled around his wrist and he shakes it off irritably. “I didn’t have a _choice_ , Jared!” 

“Bullshit you didn’t!” Rapidly running out of things within grabbing distance, Jared advances and Jensen’s eyes widen a little. Not because he’s scared Jared could hurt him – that’s laughable – but because Jared’s a cutthroat fighter. Always has been. 

Jared fights dirty. Hits below the belt and doesn’t hold back. He hits far harder than any of Jensen’s crew ever would, and that’s scary; an angry Jensen is an unpredictable Jensen and they both know it. 

Jared knows that scares Jensen more than anything. The thought of not knowing what he would do, of not being able to control himself. Usually, most days, Jared does stop. They’ve both been in this long enough to know a black eye can heal just fine, but some things can’t be undone. 

Now, though, Jared _wants_ to hurt. He _wants_ Jensen to be scared, he wants him to _sting_. 

“You always have a choice!” Jared stabs a finger at the centre of Jensen’s chest and watches Jensen’s eyes follow it. “You have a choice in every single thing you do in your whole life, and it’s no one else’s fault you’re too fucking chicken shit to make any of the right ones for yourself.” 

Jensen’s voice is controlled, but Jared sees his wrist twitching beside his hip. “Stop it, Jared.”

“Stop what, Jensen? Stop telling the truth? You know the truth, right? That thing you and your cronies play fast and loose with on a day to day basis. The thing you wave in front of people’s eyes and dance around like a god damn puppet show! You’re a _liar_.” 

Jared’s too far gone now to reign it back even if he wanted to, even as Jensen starts to vibrate with the effort to keep himself restrained, and in that second, Jared wants him to break more than he’s wanted anything in his entire life.

“You put on your fucking cape and you play the hero but you’re nothing but a goddamn liar, and if this goes south and that girl gets killed then you’ll be a _murderer_ and nothing you’ve ever done is gonna mean jack shit –!”

“I said _stop it_!” 

Jensen breaks. And it’s kind of beautiful, and it’s probably that sort of thinking, Jared realises, that gets him into these messes in the first place. 

Jared’s back connects with the sink before he even has time to blink. White hot pain shoots up his spine, but he doesn’t fall; Jensen’s up and out of the room before the spots in Jared’s vision clear. 

It could have been worse. 

It always could have been worse, so Jared takes the newfound silence to catch his breath, takes the smashed plates and bruised spine for what they are.

Just another chapter in this thing that is his life. 

 

 

Jared can’t stay in the house. 

He’s still too mad, and they both need time to cool off. At least that’s what Jared tells himself. The truth is, he’s still reeling, and he knows it will drive Jensen up the wall not knowing where he is. 

He goes to the office, because that’s where they’ll be. Sure enough, Jeff, Felicia, and Misha are crowded around Jeff’s desk looking at something on his laptop. Jared stands and stares at them through the glass for a second, even though he knows they’ll already know he’s there. They probably knew he was coming before he did. 

They’re the brains of the outfit, after all; three incredibly intelligent kamikaze stooges. Jared wonders sometimes how a bunch of people so fucking capable can be so goddamn ignorant. 

“Padalecki,” Jeff greets blandly, giving nothing away. No change there, then. 

He knew Jared was coming. He knew this was going to happen last week when he pulled Jared in here and chewed him out about his morals. Jared wants to punch him, but he knows it would be futile. And he’s fresh out of good china to throw. 

He settles for nodding silently. Felicia keeps her eyes locked on the screen awkwardly. Misha’s as unfazed as always.

“Hey Jared, did you know that there’s approximately six hundred thousand rivets in each tower of the Golden Gate bridge?” 

Jared raises an eyebrow tiredly and sends out a quick internal prayer that the bridge is still standing by morning. “No, I did not know that. Thanks, Misha.” 

Misha just drops his head and starts mumbling back into the papers. “Fascinating.” 

“Little late for a draft submission, ain’t it?” Jeff is sprawled again in that way of his, and Jared feels the anger that’s been bubbling away on low heat since the kitchen start to furl its way back into his gut. 

“If you already knew the source, why did you waste my time on all that Rossenbaum bullshit?” Jared’s too tired and too mad to beat around the bush. He wants it to come out loud and angry and brash, but it just sounds quietly rough. Drained. Done. 

Misha and Felicia stutter in their movements and then look towards him with a helplessness that reminds Jared of his little sister’s face when their parents used to argue after bedtime. 

Jeff, unsurprisingly, doesn’t even flinch. “I didn’t know the source,” he replies, flicking his hands out palms up as if to signify how very clean his hands are of all of this. _No blood here, gentlemen_. What a fucking joke. “You wouldn’t tell me. So I had to take matters into my own hands.” 

Jared snaps before he can reign himself in. “You’ve just put an innocent woman’s life on the line for a fucking story!” he yells, and Felicia and Misha stop what they’re doing to start edging surreptitiously towards the door. 

Felicia nods towards her desk outside. “I’ll just, uh…” 

Jeff nods discretely and the door clicks shut behind them; Misha only walks two steps and plonks his ass down on the cubicle chair directly opposite the window to watch the whole show. _Fucking Misha,_ Jared thinks. 

“Do you even care? Do you people even _care_ what you do to people’s lives?” Jared asks scathingly, because he’s out to hurt and Jeff was right before. Jared’s awesome at his job. He knows exactly what buttons to press to get a reaction, and Jeff’s not immune to that. 

“I don’t think you’re really in a position to judge what we do to other people’s lives, Jared. You don’t know…” 

“I don’t!” Jared agrees. “I _never_ know – because you don’t ever tell me! You tell me what I want to hear – skirt around the facts so I don’t ask any of my inane little questions and then call me in to clean up your fucking messes to the press, and you know what? I’m _done_!” He leans forwards and spits the words like he’s delivering an assignment: “I’m done with your secrets, and I’m done with your little revenge missions…”

“Are you done with Jensen?” 

Jared’s gaze locks with Jeff’s then, calm as you please, pointed and assessing and this is what he wants. This is what Jeff Morgan wants more than peace, more than sources, more than victory. He wants Jared out of the picture. 

He never, ever wanted him in it the first place. And it claws at Jared more than any of the other stuff. So naturally, he goes for Jeff’s weak spot. 

He goes for Jensen. 

“You know what the funny thing is?” He catches a flicker in Jeff’s left eye and knows it’s because he’s noticed how steady Jared’s voice has become. “You actually think you’re helping him.”

“I am helping him.”

Jared barks out a laugh and it’s short and rough like gravel. “You’re going to get him killed.” 

“Jensen knows the danger, son.”

Jared just turns to the door. “Does Samantha?” 

Felicia and Misha are long gone when he walks out. He doesn’t bother closing Jeff’s door. 

 

 

The lights from the big wheel illuminate them as they gather on the picnic benches. 

“So how did you all meet?” Jared asks, leaning forward to snag a little bit of the cotton candy that Danneel’s using more as an accessory than for actual sustenance. 

They’re an odd little group, Jared’s found. Kind of mismatched, completely unpredictable, but it works, in an odd, complimentary way. They bounce off each other in a way that Jared’s never seen before, never seemed to have with anyone else. It’s unsettling. And when Jared’s unsettled by something, he questions it. Hard. 

Chris shrugs and looks out over the fairground, his eyes snagging on a couple of short-skirted tweens and following them over to the bumper cars. “Oh, you know… Around.”

They also share the uncanny habit of avoidance. Answering a question with a question, distraction in the form of a tangent, or in Chris’s case, outright dismissal. 

“Well it wasn’t on the football team, right?” Jared pushes, because subtlety’s really not his virtue. He has other strengths. “How come you play football but Jensen doesn’t?” 

Misha lifts his gaze from the Rubik’s Cube he’d won on the hook-a-duck earlier. “Uh, how come you never wondered why I’m not on the team?” He lifts a scrawny arm and thrusts it towards Jared’s face. “Football is a game of agility as well as brute strength, you know.” 

Jared pushes his arm out of his eye line and leans more towards Jensen, who has his chin propped on his hand as he follows their display with amused eyes. 

“And how come I can’t come watch you rehearse, huh?” Jared turns a beady eye on Misha, Osric, and Danneel, who are now just watching him with open curiosity. “And how come none of you are in the school band? You play keyboard, right?” he asks Osric, who looks about thirty seconds from just taking him out in a full body tackle. “That’s cool.” Nothing. “You don’t say much, huh?”

Osric lifts his chin a fraction. “I’m introverted,” he deadpans. Misha laughs giddily. 

“I mean, you rehearse every night, right?” Jensen nods agreeably. “You guys must be good. I mean who rehearses every night? You don’t think that’s a bit much?”

Chris grunts. “Nosy little fucker, ain’t he?” 

Jensen shoots Chris a look, sitting up. “He’s _inquisitive_.” He bumps his shoulder against Jared’s. “He’s gonna be a journalist.” 

Chris nearly falls off the bench. “You’re shittin’ me?” He laughs, his whole face lighting up as he howls. “You’re sweet on a fucking _journalist?_ Jesus, you couldn’t make this stuff up, Jen!” He pauses. “Or maybe Jared could, I dunno!” 

This sets him off on another laughing fit and Jared frowns, not entirely comfortable being the butt of a joke he doesn’t really understand. But Jensen just shakes his head and kicks Chris in the side.

“Fuck off, Chris.” He tugs at Jared’s hand to draw him off the bench and points them in the direction of the Ferris wheel. “Just ‘cause you ain’t gettin’ any doesn’t mean you gotta be a hater, man!”

And Jared laughs, because Jensen – he’s kind of funny. He keeps surprising Jared with these little bursts of dark humour and sarcasm that lurk under his easy demeanour and quiet strangeness. 

There’s still something there, something that Jared hasn’t quite figured out yet. Like sometimes, when they’re just sitting, Jensen’ll go to say something – just out of the blue, out of nowhere, he’ll take in a breath and turn and open his mouth and Jared will think, _here we go_ , and then just like that, he’ll snap it shut. Turn back round. 

“Nothing,” Jensen says to Jared’s raised eyebrow, looking steadily back out at the fields beneath them as they swing in their cart. “It’s nothing.” 

Jared’s about to retort then, because when will he ever have a better opportunity to get to the bottom of this, whatever the fuck it is, than when they’re trapped in a free-hanging cage 60 feet above ground level with nowhere to go but down. 

He doesn’t, though, in the end, but only because a piercing shriek makes him jolt and then he’s twisting round in his seat to try and pinpoint where it came from. 

“Oh my god!” Jared yells, leaning all the way over to get a better look at the guy who’s hanging out the cart opposite them, his fingers white-knuckled around the bar that sprang loose and tipped him out into the cold night air. “Jensen, look…”

But Jensen doesn’t look. Jensen doesn’t look, because seemingly, Jensen’s already seen. At least that’s the only explanation Jared can come up with as to why he’s talking to an otherwise empty cage, and their metal door is hanging off its hinges, and his sorta-maybe boyfriend is tight roping across the metal poles connecting their cage to the one beside them. 

For a second, Jared assumes he’s dreaming. It’s a perfectly plausible explanation, except that pinching himself does nothing but bruise him a little and he reasons that if this was dream, Jensen would probably have given him so kind of heroic speech before busting the door open and then tongue-kissing him within an inch of his life before disembarking. 

If Jensen doesn’t plummet to his death tonight, Jared’s going to have to have a long talk with him about appropriate “heroic moment” etiquette. 

Jared’s halfway to the open gate, the cage tilting dangerously to one side, when a cold draft of wind and a flash of red whisks past him and knocks him back in his seat again. 

Danneel’s there when he blinks his eyes open, yelling over to him, one bony hand wrapped around the screaming guy’s wrist to hold him steady as Jensen hops down onto the cage roof beside her. 

“Stay put, Jared,” she yells, and Jensen’s eyes snap over to him immediately, searching him out in the cage frantically as if he had suddenly decided it would be a great idea to swing himself up onto the fairground’s feeble excuse for wiring and follow them over. 

Because clearly, Jared is the daredevil in this relationship. 

Jensen seems to settle once he sees Jared still safely caged, and he reaches down to grab the other guy’s wrist, swinging him up back into the roof. 

Quickly. One handed. Without even a grunt. His eyes still locked on Jared with something that looks like an apology. 

_“Nothing”_ , Jared’s ass. 

It’s the biggest “something” he thinks he’ll ever see in his life. 

 

 

As horrible as their fights always are, their reconciliations are _epic_. 

The sweat dries cool and sticky on their skin and Jared knows they should probably move into the bathroom and clean up because it’s gross.

They don’t. 

“I think something bad is going to happen,” Jared announces suddenly, because word vomit is his forte and they’ve been dozing in silence for about twenty minutes now. 

He feels Jensen tense all the way down his left side and the fingers that had been absently carding through his hair stutter and resume in the same breath. 

“Why d’you think that?”

Jared twitches his shoulder lazily and pretends not to hear the way Jensen forces his tone to be casual. 

“I just have a feeling.”

Jensen rolls his eyes and shifts so that Jared is underneath him, pinned to the bed with Jensen’s strong fingers wrapped around his wrists. 

“You and your feelings,” he mutters as he dips to catch Jared’s lips. 

It’s not just a feeling, though. It’s a _gut_ feeling. And Jared’s gut has never been wrong before. 

Jensen pulls back, tugging on Jared’s bottom lip as he meets Jared eyes. 

“I’m not gonna let anything bad happen to you,” Jensen says finally, and Jared believes him. 

In that moment, Jared believes nothing more than that statement, because it’s probably the one truth he can always count on without ever really thinking about it. 

He doesn’t bother telling Jensen it’s not himself he’s actually worried about. 

 

 

The ironic thing is, Jared doesn’t actually have to release the source for his story to hold. 

He has enough evidence without Samantha’s testimony. Fuck, he has enough evidence to take the thing to court. And he’d love nothing more, now that it’s finished, to go in and throw it on Jeff’s desk with a big fat “I told you so,” but unfortunately, because luck is clearly not Jared’s wingman in life, that option is off the table today. 

Jared sighs and glances towards Jeff’s still empty office. He’s been MIA all morning, but that’s not unusual. Jeff and Misha can hole themselves up in the lab for days without batting an eye. It doesn’t necessarily mean something dramatically hideous is happening while Jared sits here reformatting his nine-page document from Tahoma to Arial. 

Felicia had been here, this morning, when Jared offered her a familiar nod on the way into the office, but now she’s not. And no, Jared can’t pinpoint the exact moment she left, but it’s not particularly noteworthy, either; the girl is a flight risk. 

Still, that feeling in his gut is getting worse. 

He’s had the news pages held in his browser all morning and he clicks back to them every five minutes to scan. No bombs, no plane crashes, not even a kitten in a tree. As he thought, nothing to worry about. 

Sheppard turns up just as Jared’s finger hovers over Jeff’s speed dial. 

Sometimes, Jared wishes his gut could be wrong. 

 

 

Jared is a journalist. He researches. It’s what he does. 

The first search yields nothing. As does the second. He moves to the libraries across town and tries again. 

Jared researches _Ackles_ , because Jensen’s last name is pretty much the only solid lead that he has and the boy in question is less than forthcoming with details, considering Jared’s had his tongue down his throat on more than one occasion in the past few months. 

Alan Ackles is not difficult to dig up. The guy was flagged in more papers throughout the eighties than the president. Volunteered for youth groups, sponsored walks for harsher gun control – and, in one instance, a heroic save involving an armed robber and a bank clerk. 

Turns out the Ackles family is a regular Robin Hood crew, Jared surmises, clicking through another couple of months and pausing on a headline that reads **“Caped Crusaders Strike Again.”** It’s easy to pick Alan Ackles out of the front page spread, because he looks like Jensen. He’s standing front and centre at the broken window of a downtown apartment block, one hand holding onto the shattered window ledge, the other clinging to a child whose looks no older than four. Flames lick the page edges, smoke obscuring most of the frame, but there are others, behind him – Jared can just make out the outline of another wailing child being held up towards the window like a peace offering, strong hands gripping its tiny waist, waiting for it to be lifted out to safety. They’re _not_ fireman. Jared knew that even in the eighties, firemen didn’t attack burning buildings in jeans with baseball caps pulled low to obscure their faces. 

There’s more. Lots more. Capsized fishing boats, derailed trains, terrorist attacks on the water supply. Sometimes there are pictures, sometimes there’s not – but there’s never a name attached to those one’s. Just Crew or Crusade. Never a photo fit. 

The last entry under Alan Ackles is an obituary. October 19th, 1990. Cause of death is stated as car accident. “San Francisco will surely miss one of its leading supporters and protectors of the peace,” the last sentence reads. 

Jared drags up a picture, a shady black and white number, and the guy standing beside Alan Ackles is no surprise. Jensen had said they’d been old friends, after all, and why wouldn’t Jared believe Jensen? The kid is clearly a vessel of truth and openness. Still, it’s pretty hilarious to compare the grinning, dark haired, clean-shaven guy with the “Uncle Jim” Jared knows. It’s the person on Alan’s left that Jared leans closer to. 

His name is emblazoned underneath in the caption, as if Jared wouldn’t recognise him. 

“Well fuck,” Jared breathes, leaning back in his seat and ignoring the librarian’s horrified _“Shhh.”_

 

 

Jeff looks like someone’s run him over. “They’ve got Jensen” is Jared’s greeting, and it’s nothing he doesn’t already know, but his blood still runs cold. 

“Who?” 

His name is Richard Speight, apparently. 

“Him and Alan – they had beef.” Chris is stripping what looks to be a machete with long, even swipes, but doesn’t look up at them. 

“What, like, they argued?” Jared ventures, then winces because what is he, a fucking second grade teacher?

“They were…nemeses.” Misha’s delivery makes it sound like they’re in some kind of cartoon action sequence, and for all intents and purposes, they might as well be. Jared doesn’t quite know what they want him to do or why the hell they brought him here, of all places. 

Everything’s moving too fast. Everything since Shepherd turned up at his office and announced _“It’s bad, beanpole,”_ has been kind of blurry around the edges. 

“We assumed he’d moved on.” Felicia is there, suddenly, a stack of papers under one arm and a tablet of some kind on the other. “Actually, we hoped he’d been killed, but you know, beggars can’t be choosers.” Her glasses ensure that her vocabulary doesn’t sway onlookers to question her genius. 

She flips her tablet round so Jared can glimpse a grainy CCTV photo of who he’s assuming is Speight. He looks kind of scrawny. Like the guy who sometimes turns up at your door and wants to sell you dictionaries. Jared doesn’t really follow.  
“He’s been off the radar for years – turns out, with good reason.” 

Jared shakes his head. Behind him, Osric is turning a Petri dish full of liquid into a mini tsunami. “I don’t get it.”

“He wants us dead.” Osric speaks up and lets the water fall back into the dish without sloshing over the sides. He turns his head and catches Jared’s gaze and it’s probably the most he’s said to Jared since they were 17. “He wants to stop us once and for all.”

“We’ve been following his movements since we clocked him in Montana a few months ago.” Felicia is back, sliding the papers in her arms across the tables towards each of them. Jared stops one with his palm and stares down into the guy’s face again. This is the guy who has Jensen. This is the guy who could ruin his life. 

Jared always figured he’d be taller. 

“So wait…” A thought suddenly occurs to him. “You knew? You knew he was back?”

Felicia winces. “We had an inkling” 

And Jared’s back to being confused. “What do you mean, an _inkling_?” 

Suddenly another set of photos are being dropped over his head, landing in a messy pile beside his hands. His own face stares back at him. Open, laughing, completely unaware that he’s got a target between his eyes. 

“Wh…” He looks up to Jeff towering over him, his gaze down on the photos that Jared never knew existed before now. 

“They were sent to Jensen. Two pictures, every two days. This one was two days ago.” 

He drops one last picture on the pile. Eyes closed, face lax with sleep. It’s him alright. Perfectly vulnerable. Perfectly oblivious. Jared wants to throw up. 

“It’s Speight’s MO. He likes to taunt you, make you sweat.” 

“This is why he was so worried about where I was going?” Jared mumbles, picking up the photos, feeling the weight of them in his hands. Trying to recall how fucking agitated he was with every question Jensen fired at him like some nosy little housewife. 

Felicia lays a hand on his forearm. “Speight knew Jensen wouldn’t let this go, Jared. You’re his weakness. They know it.” 

Jared shakes his head. “I don’t get it. Why did they take him? They can’t just walk in and kidnap someone like Jensen, something must have happened…”

“Something did.”

Jeff slides into the seat beside Jared, dropping the article in front of him, and the pictures scatter like ash. His name is in block capitals across the cover page; Jared remembers typing it not a week ago. _Working title. Story by Jared Padalecki._  
“The article? What does that have to do with it?”

“Everything.” Felicia hits a button on her tablet and the screen on the wall in front of them springs to life. Samantha Smith stares back at them in a wide shot, smiling, her eyes bright but guarded as she leans in towards Jared over their lattes. Two weeks ago, Jared’s mind supplies. Coffee shop, downtown. 

“Sam?” Jared’s eyebrows knot, but he can’t stop looking at the screen, his mind going over and over again everything about that day. The coffee had been too hot. They had to wait a bit to sip it – and during that time, Sam had talked. About her two kids, about her new placement at the walk-in clinic on Bush Street. They hadn’t talked about the story. Not one word. Jared had everything he needed at that point, anyway. 

“That’s not Sam.” Jeff reaches into his inside jacket pocket and removes a square of paper. Another photo. He puts it on the table between them so Samantha Smith’s lifeless face stares up at them. “ _That’s_ Sam.”

Jared feels bile start to rise in the back of his throat at the sight of her grey skin. Her blank, staring eyes, the bruises around her throat. 

“I…I don’t get it.”

Her youngest is five. She has a thing for pandas; she’s starting kindergarten in the fall. 

“You know what a shape shifter is, Jared?” Misha breezes in out of nowhere, his lab coat blowing behind him like a crisp white cape as he grabs the tablet out of Felicia’s hands and she makes a squeak of protest. 

The legs of the bench Jared is sitting on make a horrible screeching sound as he pushes it back, clambers onto shaky legs. “No, no no – this can’t be happening.” His fingers tighten in his hair, but this is just a nightmare. 

Misha’s still talking, clicking through slides like he’s conducting some bizarre power point to a bunch of college students. 

_“Mathew Cohen, born September 28th 1982…bizarre ability to transform his body into any human form that he touches… Richard Speight’s right hand man…”_

All Jared can think about is those fucking kids. Sitting there in their fucking panda pyjamas wondering why their mother is never coming home. 

Because of him, he realises, and it’s like a sledgehammer to the gut. This is all because of him. Because he had to write that fucking article. 

“The coroner put Sam’s time of death at around three weeks ago, Jared.” Misha raises his voice: “Jared!”

Jared’s snaps his head towards the noise, blinks. 

“Cohen killed Sam and took her form to manipulate you. To try to find out what you know.”

“Know about what?” Jared breathes, because hell if Jared knows. He has no clue what he can do to fix any of this. They’re supposed to be telling him, they’re supposed to be the experts in all things villainous. But the look that passes between them tells Jared he may have over estimated them. He feels his way to the nearest stool and lowers himself down. 

Jeff sounds gruff as sandpaper when he speaks up. “Jensen didn’t just walk into their hands, Jared. He had an ultimatum. You know things they want. Things they’d kill you to get. Jensen knew you’d never give them the information.”

“They think he knows.” Realisation dawns on Jared like a brick of lead. “They think I told him everything.”

Misha leans in inquisitively. “And by the look on your face, I assuming this isn’t the case.”

Jared’s head thunks to the table. “This can’t be happening.”

 

 

 

The English block is the farthest away from the courtyard, so during breaks it’s practically a ghost town. Jared usually likes to sit on the steps at the end of the hall and catch up on his reading, taking advantage of the quiet that he rarely finds in the common or the cafeteria. 

The door to the classroom is the third down from the lockers, Jared knows it well. He’s walked this route a hundred times already this year. Fourth period English is the only class he shares with Jensen; that’s not necessarily why it’s his favourite, but it might have something to do with it. 

His teacher is probably the other reason. 

Jared really needs to start questioning his character judgement. 

The door’s already open when he gets there, but Jared knocks his knuckles against the wood anyway; Mr. Morgan looks up from the stack of papers he’s seemingly grading. He smiles and tilts his chin to the empty classroom. 

“Padalecki,” he grunts, setting his pen down and leaning back in his chair. “Can I help you with something, son?”

He probably can, actually. He can probably answer every question Jared’s been sitting on for the last year. But Jared’s not entirely sure anymore how he can guess what are truths and what are lies. 

Before now, he always thought he was an excellent judge of character. Funny, how he can prove himself so thoroughly and drastically wrong without even meaning to. 

Jared cleared his throat and stepped into the room, keeping the door open behind him. “Yes, actually. I uh…I have a question.”

Morgan’s eyebrow twitches. “Okay.” He waits, his lips quirking when Jared makes no attempt to continue. “Well let’s have it, kiddo. I ain’t getting any younger here.” 

“I’m writing a story, for the next issue of the paper, and I’m having a moral dilemma.”

Morgan nods slowly, but there’s a shadow in his eyes that Jared can’t quite ignore. Jared’s so sick of trying to ignore things that it’s ridiculous. 

“Well then, as the official head of the school paper, it’s only fitting I help you out, isn’t it, Jared?” 

Morgan’s hands sweep out towards the vacant chair in front of his desk and Jared pauses for only a split second before dropping his backpack to the floor and dropping into it. He’s pretty sure a seemingly upstanding high school teacher wouldn’t murder a student in broad daylight with his door wide open in the middle of lunch period. 

Then again, before now, he was also pretty sure that fifteen year old boys couldn’t scale sheer walls or infiltrate burning buildings without gas masks or be in more than one place at one time. Jared’s really being forced to reassess his standing on a whole bunch of things, if he’s honest. So yeah, he’s a little jumpy nowadays. 

“So there’s this story I want to run, on this guy, at the school…” 

Morgan’s face is impassive. Not a flicker. Jared swallows and continues. “And it’s a good story, too. I mean, this one’ll put me on the map for sure…”

“Then what’s the problem?” Jared’s gaze snaps to Morgan at his casual delivery and stays there, watching as the fingers he has clasped under his chin splay out to show how very much this is not a problem. “You’ve got a story. You’re a journalist. You run it.” 

Jared stares for a second and has to bite down on his tongue to stop him from screaming bullshit. He blinks a couple times. Morgan still doesn’t move. 

“That’s it? That’s your advice?” Jared asks eventually, his voice lifting a bit in disbelief as his eyebrows dip simultaneously. “Just run the story?” 

Morgan lifts a shoulder and leans forward so his elbows rest on the edge of the desk. “You want to be a journalist, right?” 

It catches Jared off guard, because yeah, he does want to be a journalist. He’s had his majors picked out since he was seven. Everyone knows that. 

“Yeah.” 

Morgan’s smile twists slightly into something Jared can’t quite decipher. “Then it’s best you learn now, son. Sometimes, in this job, you gotta put moral dilemmas to one side and do what you gotta do.” 

Jared blinks again, once, twice. And then he loses it. 

“Sell him out?” he spits. “You want me to sell him out? Do you have any idea what will happen if it gets out? What would happen to him? Do you even _care_? What the hell kind of person are you?”

Morgan skirts a look towards the still-open door, then leans all the way forward on his elbows so his face is only a foot away from where Jared is still seething. 

“The way I see it,” his voice drops to something Jared’s never heard before, immediately forcing him to lean in and listen up, “is that I’m the kind of person who’s looking at a pint sized wannabe Lois Lane with a half-cocked fairytale, and he’s hell bent on becoming the laughing stock of this entire school.” 

Jared bristles at the Lois Lane comment and wonders just how savvy Mr. Morgan is when it comes to him. 

“You wanna run it, son, you go right ahead.” Morgan’s smile twists a little as he slides back in his chair and splays his hands out again, and Jared’s kind of reminded of the Bond villains his dad makes him watch on old reruns. “I would.”

Jared narrows his eyes and contemplates throwing the hard copy of _The Great Gatsby_ at his elbow at Mr. Morgan’s face. 

“I don’t believe you,” Jared says quietly, perfectly calm. 

There’s not a lot Jared trusts anymore, but there are some things. Some things he’d be willing to bet his own life on. Any good journalist knows to take those things and build on them; it’s all instinct, really. Gut work, he likes to call it. 

Morgan doesn’t give much away, but the twitch of his left cheek tells Jared he’s piqued the guy’s interest. “Oh really?” He lets out a gruff laugh and raises his eyes. “And why’s that?” 

Jared draws a newspaper clipping from his left pocket, carefully unfolds it, and slides it over the massacred wood top of the desk so that Morgan can see the black and white snapshot with his name emblazoned along the bottom. 

“Because if I blow the lid off Jensen, I blow it off of all of you.” Jared smiles when Morgan’s gaze pins him into his chair. “And you know it.” 

It’s the first time Jared learned never to underestimate his gut. 

 

 

In the past, when Jared thought of Jensen’s work, he always thought in terms of Dexter’s Laboratory and The Powerpuff Girls. 

Jared thinks it’s because he finds it easier to focus on the super nerdy sonic guns and spandex than the super dangerous bombs and fire fights aspects. 

Jensen thinks it’s because Jared watches too much Cartoon Network. 

Either way, in all of his ponderings and occasional deductions, he never imagined it quite like this. 

“It’s a fucking .45, Jared. It can’t be that difficult.” 

Jared frowns down at the gun in his hand and then up at the target that’s currently dancing back and forwards in front of the twelve bullet holes in the wall. 

Jim sighs heavily and heaves himself up off the stool he’d been resting on. He runs a hand down his face and mumbles something about “ _fucking idiots and the horses they rode in on_ ” as he ambles over to the counter to pour himself yet another whiskey. 

If Jared was braver, he’d mention that he isn’t 100% conformable being trained in the art of firearms by a drunk 70-year old who keeps slurring death threats at him, but Uncle Jim is as scary and off-putting as Jared remembers, so he keeps quiet. 

“You’ve gotta aim, boy.” Jim swigs back half the tumbler of amber liquid and turns to point in the vague direction of the target. “Aiming is where you concentrate on one spot and pull the trigger real quick.” 

The target is actually a piece of cardboard, cut out into a vague human shape with R. Speight scrawled across the front in blue sharpie. The little X’s marking his eyes are slightly off putting, but not as much as Osric, who’s perched in the rafters, swinging the thing back and forwards on a piece of string. 

He kept looking at Jared and rolling his eyes every time the bullet sped past the target to embedded itself in the plasterboard and it’s really starting to get on Jared’s nerves. He’s just about to suggest they stand Osric there instead of R. Speight to encourage this whole aiming thing when something occurs to him, and he turns to Jim. 

“Why the hell am I learning to fire a gun anyway?” He waves the thing around. “Will guns even work on this guy if he’s like…super enforced?” 

Jim gets this pissy look like he’s going to punch him and Jared take an involuntary step backwards when he advances. 

“First,” he snatches the gun out of Jared’s flailing hand and expertly unclips it, “super enforced is not a thing.” He empties the bullets out into his palm and then starts digging around in his pocket. “Second, the next time you wave a loaded gun at me, imma punch you in the neck.” 

Jared smiles sheepishly as Jim raises a warning eyebrow at him. “And lastly, it’s not Speight you’re gonna be aiming for.” He pulls his fist free from his jacket pocket and Jared leans in to inspect the bright silver bullets resting in his palm.

“Silver is moon metal.” Misha’s propped against the counter, dipping his hand rhythmically into a bowl of popcorn he’d made in the microwave earlier. “The elements inside the silver bullet can kill a shape shifter more definitely than a regular bullet in its shape shifter form due to the shape shifter moon cycles.” 

“Stop saying Shape shifter.” Chris tells him seriously and Misha frowns.

“Like a werewolf?” Jared asks. 

“No,” Misha replies instantly, plucking his attention from where he’s been flicking kernals at Chris’ head. He shoves a handful into his mouth and chews slowly. “There’s no such thing as werewolves, don’t be ridiculous.” 

Jared can _feel_ Osric rolling his eyes. 

“Right, silly me,” Jared mumbles as he sees Osric idly create a tiny fireball in the hand that isn’t still swinging the string. 

The gun is pressed into his hand again and draws Jared’s attention back to Jim staring him down impatiently. “But even silver bullets aren’t gonna drop a big mean wall, so maybe we should go back to listening to what the fuck I say and try and learn how not to die, huh?”

 

 

Jeff reappears with Danneel and Chris in tow half an hour and thirteen fresh bullet holes later. 

Chris glances at the wall and the smoking hole through R. Speight’s groin and raises his eyebrows. “Going well, I see.” 

Jared tosses the now-empty gun down onto the counter and throws his hands out. “This is ridiculous. Why the hell are we here putting me through firing practise when you all could be out there getting him back?”

“Because charging in half cocked with no cover and no plan will get us killed, you killed, and Jensen killed.” Jeff puts a camera onto the desk in front of the giant plasma screen and turns to lean against it, arms folded decisively. “We do recon. We get smart.” He nods to the wall of destruction. “We get you skilled in something that doesn’t require me to explain things to my decorator.” 

The target falls to the floor with a clatter and Osric lands perfectly on two feet, breezing past them with a mumbled, “ _Thank God_ ,” that does nothing to elevate Jared’s self esteem in gun toting. 

Jared sighs and runs a hand through his hair. It’s been four hours and eighteen minutes since he learned Jensen had been taken. God knows how long since it actually happened; like always, he’s probably only filled in on a need-to-know basis. God knows what they’re keeping from him to keep him sweet. 

This is their show, after all. Jared’s just doing as he’s told at this point. 

“How do we even know he’s still alive?” Jared asks, even with Jensen’s smile and Jensen’s laugh and Jensen’s hands flash in Technicolor behind his eyes. “How do we know it’s not just a trap?”

“Oh, it is a trap,” Jim replies easily, frowning as he pokes his fingers neatly through one of the bullet holes in the plasterboard. “It’s definitely trap, we’re not freakin’ idiots. But Jensen is alive. Speight needs your intel. Jensen doesn’t know it; Speight’ll’ve figured out that much by now. So he needs you.” 

“And the only way to get you is through Jensen,” Osric supplies, now propped against Misha and sharing the popcorn supply. 

“And he knows we’re not about to send you in alone, so we’re a bonus little side dish,” Danneel chirps. “He won’t risk all that by killing Jensen straight off.” She’s stripping what look to be an automatic laser gun of some sort. 

It looks terrifying in her hands, actually, and Jared wonders for the hundredth time that day just how the fuck he managed to get himself into this shit. 

“Ok, fine.” Jared sighs, because however it happened, he’s in. He’s so far in it’s ridiculous. “Tell me what I have to do.”

He catches Jeff’s eyes then and sees something in them that he doesn’t think he’s actually seen before, or at least not directed at him. One blink and it’s gone. 

“Maybe we’re approaching this wrong,” Misha says finally, pushing his bowl of snacks into Osric’s hands and approaching Jared the way Jared imagines he approaches a mathematic conundrum. He comes to stand directly in front of Jared and raises his hands. “What are you good at, Jared?” 

Jared opens his mouth to reply, but Jeff’s gruff voice sounds from where he’s helping Danneel catalogue inventory. 

“Keeping in mind we can’t stop super strength villains using a notebook and impressive alliteration.” 

He snaps it shut again. 

Misha is watching him like he’s about to reveal the meaning of life. Chris’s eyebrows are somewhere up near the brim of his hat. Jim lets out a disgruntled huff and pours another finger of Beam into his glass. The only sounds in the room are the clanging of metal from the ammo table and Osric’s rhythmic chewing. 

Jared swallows and clears his throat. “I…uh…” He shrugs and rubs the back of his neck awkwardly as he delves through his list of characteristics that may be of use to these people. Struggling, he’s just about to start waxing poetic about a pen being mightier than a sword when something occurs to him amidst a flash of warm skin and strong hands and green eyes. He drops his hand from his neck and looks up hopefully. 

“I can fight?” 

Chris eyebrows rack up a notch and Jim winces as he throws back his final mouthful and slams the tumbler back onto the counter.

“Define, _fight_?” 

 

Twenty minutes later, Chris’s back slams hard onto the wooden loft floor. Jared straightens out of his inward-defence stance and looks up to see everyone gaping at him. 

A little piece of popcorn falls out of Osric’s mouth and lands back into the bowl. 

“Four hours, Jared!” Jim bellows suddenly, and Osric jumps and drops the bowl with a clatter. Jim flings his hands out at the ruined wall and then at Chris rubbing his ribs grumpily. “That’s four hours of my life I’m not gettin’ back!” 

Jared grins sheepishly, still trying to catch his breath, and shrugs. “Sorry?” 

Not even a little bit. 

 

 

Jared thought that once the truth was out, he would look at Jensen differently. 

It’s not every day you discover your boyfriend is actually a secret superhero who fights crime when he’s not in English class. Not that Jared ever had reason to ponder the possibility, but he imagines it would change his perception of a guy. 

It doesn’t, really, and Jared curses the anti-climatic nature of real life as he props himself up in the doorway of Uncle Jim’s garage and watches Jensen vacuum the Impala. 

“Hey.”

Jensen grins when he sees him standing there through the windscreen, and Jared just out his chin in greeting. Jeff hasn’t told him, he figures. Probably part of some creepy teacher superhero plan to suss out exactly what Jared’s stand is on all of this. 

Good luck with that, Jared thinks, because fuck if he knows. 

Jensen shuts of the switch and the vacuum dies with a soft humming whine. “I thought you were busy today with that big story thing…?”

“I know,” Jared says, because he was right: This isn’t some movie. This is real life. Jensen is real. What they have is _real_ …or at least Jared thought it was. 

A drawn-out monologue isn’t going to change any of that. It isn’t going to change the fact that Jared’s been lied to for the entirety of their relationship thus far. 

It isn’t going to change the fact that in reality, Jared doesn’t have the faintest idea who the hell Jensen Ackles is at all. 

But Jensen still looks exactly the same, down to the confused little dimple he gets between his eyes like when Jared tries to explain their algebra homework to him. 

“Huh?” 

Jared shrugs, pushes off the doorframe and steps closer to where Jensen is still standing with the vacuum nozzle in his hand. 

His hair is still sandy fair, his eyes still perfectly green. He’s still got the freckles scattered across his nose that the sunshine brought out on their beach trip last weekend. 

He looks exactly the same. He _is_ exactly the same. 

Except Jared knows everything’s about to change entirely. 

“I know about your father.”

Jared speaks slowly, softly. Perfectly clear and matter-of-fact because what he’s delivering here _is_ fact. “I know about Jeff, about Chris, Danneel, Jim, all of you…” 

Jensen isn’t Jeff. He has tells and he doesn’t try to hide any of them. 

His face slowly drops, his hand going lax and dropping the vacuum nozzle to the floor with a clatter that vibrates throughout the whole garage. But he doesn’t say anything, just staring at Jared like he’s watching a car wreck. 

“I know what you are, what you can do…” Jared takes another step towards Jensen and Jensen doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink, and Jared should be cautious. He should be scared, because he’d only skimmed the truth before. He knows what Jensen is. He knows what he can do – but he doesn’t know everything. Not yet. 

He doesn’t know if he really wants to. 

Jensen’s mouth opens to take a shaky breath. “What did you do?” 

Jared cocks his head. “I spoke to Jeff,” he says simply. 

Jensen’s eyes nearly bulge out of his face and he shakes his head back and forth in jerky little movements, “No. No, no, no… Jared, this is bad.” He backs up, one step at a time, towards the open door of the Impala’s front seat, and lowers himself into it. “Jared, this is really bad.” 

Yeah, no shit, Jared thinks. Because Jared’s never been one to point fingers of blame in situations like this, but this was all Jensen’s fucking fault. 

“You should have told me,” is what he says out loud, and Jensen’s eyes snap up to him from between his fingers as he cradles his face in his hands and mumbles nonsense into them. 

A little laugh falls unchecked from his parted lips. “Told you?” 

Jensen’s up suddenly, and Jared takes a halting step backwards because there wasn’t really a manual he could read before he put himself into this new situation, and he doesn’t know for sure how many ways a superhero can brain a mere moral with the nozzle of a vacuum cleaner. 

“What the hell was I supposed to tell you, Jared?”

Jared meets his eyes and doesn’t move away. “The truth.” 

Jensen seems to deflate then, lowering his head so he’s speaking to the floor. “I couldn’t tell you the truth.”

“Why not?”

“Because the truth would get you killed!” Jensen yells, and Jared wonders how strange this conversation sounds to any of the neighbours listening over their hedges. 

They’ve probably turned a blind eye to worse. 

“You don’t know that,” Jared says eventually, calmly, because he’s so sick of running on assumptions and half-truths. 

Jensen steps closer to him. Another and another, until they’re standing toe to toe. Until Jensen can reach out and grab Jared’s shoulders in his hands. 

“All I know is that I can’t let something bad happen to you.” His eyes bore into Jared’s, perfectly sincere, and Jared wonders what the hell is wrong with him that he completely believes him. 

There’s _something_ wrong with him, clearly. Probably a mind meld, he figures, and yeah, he’s got to start acquiring some superhero knowledge that didn’t fall out of Marvel. 

Jared drops his gaze. “You still should have told me the truth.” 

He hears Jensen sigh and he presses their foreheads together for a second before stepping back. “Okay.” He throws his hands out to the side in surrender. “What do you wanna know?” 

And god, the things Jared wants to know. 

He wants to know if Alan always knew he was a superhero. If it got passed on to Jensen like he inherited his jaw line. Like he inherited his mother’s eyes. 

He wants to know if Jeff and Jim were as blown away as Jared had been when Alan finally came clean to them. When he held his hands up and admitted he needed their help. When an old boxing trainer and a budding journalist dropped everything they knew and to help their friend hone the parts of himself he couldn’t control. 

He wants to know why they had called themselves The Crew, way back in 1974 when this whole thing started. He wanted to know why in the world they thought establishing an elite crew of crime fighters to battle San Francisco’s crime wave would end in anything other than a murdered Alan and a five year old orphan. 

He wants to know whose decision it was to raise Jensen the same way, to find others like him. Other kids who needed saving. Who might not have been as lucky as Alan had been back then to have friends like he had. 

He wants to know why they think this will end any better than before. 

Jared wants to know a hell of a lot more than he knows he’ll ever get answers for, but that’s okay. Because there’s only one answer he wants to hear, only one truth that matters to him. 

“Were you ever going to tell me?” He catches Jensen’s eyes and holds them, because Jeff lies with his words, Jared’s found, but Jensen lies with his eyes.

“I don’t know,” Jensen answers. And it’s’ the truth. “I wanted to, but Jeff, he thought…”

And yeah, Jared is aware of what Jeff thought. 

Jensen’s face twists then into something akin to a wince, and he looks away again. “I like you,” Jared hears, mumbled somewhere south of his shoulders, and Jensen looks up to catch Jared’s gaze again and Jared can’t breathe. “I really like you.”

For one second, for one horrible second, Jared thinks is it: he’s getting the speech. The “It’s not you, it’s the fact that I have hidden super talents and my mentors don’t approve” speech. 

But then Jensen is lurching forward, tipping up onto his toes to crush Jared’s mouth to his and Jared feels his breath release in one swift, relieved swoop. 

“You were too risky. I was supposed to break it off with you,” Jensen mumbles against Jared’s lips, pulling back only long enough to take tiny little sips from his bottom lip before he leans in again to sweep his tongue in. 

Jared smiles against the onslaught, wrapping his arm around Jensen’s waist to pull him flush along his body. “You’re not doing a very good job.” 

He feels Jensen shrug as he pulls back, his hands resting either side of Jared’s neck. His eyes skip over Jared’s face and he frowns a little. 

“I definitely think you should be more freaked out than this.” 

Jared shrugs back and pulls Jensen tighter against him, his hands linking up at the small of Jensen’s back as he bends down to press his forehead against Jensen’s. “Dude, I faced down Jeff today. There’s not much that can shake me anymore.” 

Jensen barks out a laugh, shaking his head without making any move to shift out of Jared’s grasp. He looks up at Jared, suddenly with a serious little tilt to his mouth. 

“It’s not gonna be easy, you know,” he says. “Being with me.” 

Jared stares back and thinks of everything he knows now, all of his puzzle pieces slotted into place. He thinks of everything he’s read. He thinks about all the warnings Jeff dealt out in full disclosure this afternoon with a cocky little smirk on his face like he knows anything about Jared at all. 

He thinks of burning buildings, and giant ferries wheels and matching coffins. Of neat little obituaries all lined up in the newspaper. Of screaming children, and shining medals and bright red capes blowing on the skyline of the Golden Gate Bridge. 

He looks down into Jensen’s dubious eyes and smiles. 

“Where’s the fun in easy?” 

 

 

The lab has a window. One solitary bay window that stretches almost the whole of the wall, tinted out from the outside, but showing off the whole of San Fran bay from the inside. 

Jared sits at one of the tables there and nurses a tumbler of something brown that Jim pushed into his hand earlier and called _liquid courage in case things go to shit_. 

Somewhere behind him, the others are putting the end game together. Occasionally, Jared hears Chris’s outraged snort over Felicia and Misha’s steady, measured tones. Mostly he just drinks his drink. 

“You know, as much Jim has you believing it, that stuff doesn’t actually hold the answers.” 

Jeff’s admonition startles him as he sits beside Jared and rests his weight on his elbows. Jared doesn’t look up from his glass. He also doesn’t point out that Jeff has one of his own. 

They don’t speak for two and half minutes.

“So where’d you learn to fight like that?” 

Jared shrugs. “Jensen.”

Jeff’s gruff chuckle startles him and he glances out the corner of his eye at Jeff running a hand down his face, like he’s trying to wipe the smile away. “Yeah, I figured.” He shoots Jared a look knowing. “I didn’t assume you just _guessed_ Chris’s weak spots.” 

Jared can’t help the pull of a smile, but he directs it down into his glass all the same. “Yeah, well, I can’t see through walls or hear a car alarm from ten blocks away, so it was still a fair fight, in my opinion.” 

Super senses trump super intelligence – even in a knuckle fight. 

Jared can still hear Jensen’s voice thrum low and steady in his ear, feel his body, a warm sinewy strip of heat down his back as he adjusts Jared’s hips and throws his elbow out.

_“Chris is all brawn. He’ll throw himself into the punch, but he’s not as agile on his feet as Osric. Makes him sloppier and more exposed, if you know where to hit him.”_

It’s not like Jared thought he would ever really need to use it, outside a stupid bar fight or a possible street mugging. _Just in case,_ Jensen liked to say. 

Just in case you run into the wrong person. Just in case one of them turns. Just in case their tempers get the better of them and they forget you can’t bend steel or manipulate tsunamis or teleport yourself to the Bahamas with the blink of an eye. 

“Just in case I’m kidnapped by an evil genius and you have to hold your own in a rescue mission” had never come up. 

Now, Jared wonders if this was his intention all along. If this whole thing was some inevitable end game carved out by fate to prove them both wrong. 

It wouldn’t piss Jared off as much if it didn’t mean proving Jeff right. 

“…trust issues.” 

Jared’s startled out of his thoughts by the realization that Jeff has been talking to him again. “Huh?”

Jeff shoots him a look that resembles his mother’s when she knows he’s not listened to word of parental wisdom she’d been bestowing. 

“I said I don’t want this to become some soap opera about feelings and trust issues…”

His delivery was a lot more direct than Jared’s momma’s, evidently. 

“I know you think I never trusted you. That I didn’t want you around.” 

“You don’t,” Jared retorts immediately, knocking back some of his drink because Jim was right about that much, at least; liquid courage is not something to snort at. 

“Not for the reasons you think,” Jeff says back almost as fast, and Jared smirks. 

“Did Jensen ever tell you about his mother?” 

Jared shrugs and rubs his fingers over a chip in the glass. “She died when he was five.” 

“She was _murdered_ when he was five,” Jeff corrects, and Jared doesn’t flinch because he knows. 

Kidnapped, held in exchange for her husband. For her son. Alan couldn’t get to her in time. In this instance, Jared’s really hoping the apple fell hard and far from the tree. 

Jared might not be a big believer in fate, but he’s well aware of history and its poetic ability to repeat itself. 

“Alan wasn’t the same after,” Jeff says, and Jared can’t help the scowl he directs at the guy.

“Of course he wasn’t the same. His wife was fucking murdered.”

“And it was his fault,” Jeff replies like it was nothing. Like it was the truth. “ _Our_ fault. Donna was… She didn’t ask for this. She didn’t sign up for the life she got – for the end she got.”

“She married him,” Jared replies, picking up the glass to swirl the liquid inside, just to do something with his hands and keep from lashing out. “She loved him.” He makes sure to catch Jeff’s eyes before adding matter-of-factly, “That’s signing off.” 

He’s surprised by Jeff’s smile. “And that was always the problem, wasn’t it?” 

Jared’s confused scowl is enough to prompt Jeff to go on: “I know you think that we’re ruining his life, not letting him be normal, trying to get himself killed, but Jensen’s meant for great things Jared.” Now Jared does want to lash out, because if he has to sit through another lecture about fate and destiny and greater good when his boyfriend is tied up somewhere, terrified and alone and half dead, then he’s going to claw his own eyes out. “Alan knew that, we all know that – he’s always going to be that guy.” At the pause, Jared raises his eyebrows to indicate that he’s lost.

“The guy who saves the world,” Jeff adds wryly, and Jared’s gaze drops to trembling his grip around his drink. “And I know you might not get it, but it’s important for him to have this. To have them – watching out for him”

“I know that,” Jared mumbles, because he does. Jensen was always destined to save the world. And for people who believed in all that destiny crap, that was a pretty big deal. Jared _knew_ that. He wasn’t an idiot. 

Jeff sighs tiredly and Jared glances over as he leans back. “But the thing that I hated, the thing that I always worried about – the thing I don’t think even you really get – is that our world is out there.” He gestures out of the bay windows, at the lights of San Francisco all the way down to bay. 

Jeff’s mouth twitches and he catches Jared’s eyes briefly, just for a moment as Jared watches him intently. “Jensen’s is sitting right here beside me.” 

 

 

The plan is pretty straightforward in the end. Really, Jared was expecting a lot more explosions and fanfare – and possibly a cape. 

He gets none of that. 

“Jared, the main thing you’ve got to remember is not to get dead,” Misha reiterates, pointing the laser pen he’s been using to map out the crew’s resting positions on the blueprint that Felicia had thrown up onto the plasma screen. “Can you do that?”

Jared nods. “I will certainly try my best.” 

Misha nods back. “Good.” He claps once and presses his pen with a little flourish so the laser beam contracts, and looks around with a wide grin. “This concludes my presentation; please hold for the geographical low down from Miss Day, and once again, I would like to reiterate that we _not get dead_.”

There’s a smattering of applause from Chris, Osric, and Danneel that seems to be common fare, judging by the roll of Jim’s eyes. 

“So they managed to nab your boy in a warehouse not too far from Sea Cliff.” 

Jared leans back in chair and blinks rapidly, because Shepherd was _definitely_ not in front of him half a second ago. No one else shifts one muscle. 

“According to my sources, they haven’t moved him.” Shepherd shrugs, leans against the table, and picks up a pen there to twirl in between his fingers like a baton. “No need, really. What with all of his…” The pen stops as he turns his palms up, his eyes widening dramatically, “ _fanfare_.”

“Wait,” Jared sits forward suddenly, grabbing Shepherds attention, “you’ve seen Jensen? He’s alright?” 

Shepherd sighs. “Still as pouty and handsome as when you last laid lips on him, you atrocious sinner.” 

Across the table, Danneel rolls her eyes. “Right. And we’re just going to trust you and your sources?” 

Jared’s no stranger to Danneel and her trust issues when it comes the opposite sex. It’s slightly unusual for her strapping a switch blade to her ankle while she’s doing it, though. Jared’s liking this side of her. 

She shoots Shepherd a dirty glare. “Because any acquaintance of yours couldn’t possibly be a scummy fucking liar.” 

Shepherd offers a disarming smile. “No, my dear. You’re supposed to trust me. The sources I don’t trust have a nasty habit of falling dead.” He turns to Jeff suddenly. “It’s a handy motivational tool. You could do with a bit of pizzazz to keep these rugrats in line.” 

Jeff, as always, brings “unamused” to a whole new level. 

Shepherd blows out a low whistle and turns back to the group. “Ooo-kay. So, bad guys, eh?” He claps his hands as if to bring the class to order and Misha leans forward, offering his laser pointer. Shepherd looks at Misha like he’s just shot a rainbow out of his ass and Misha slides back in his seat with a shrug. 

“Richard Speight. Super name The Trickster. Birth date, unknown – but if I were to guess, I’d say a really long time ago.” Shepherd throws a photo onto the table, a simple 4x6 of Speight leaning over a bound and gagged Jensen. He grins at Danneel. “Proof enough for you darling?” 

Jared grabs for the photo, brings it up close to his face to get a better look. It’s not enough that he can count fingers and toes, but it’s Jensen. Alive, whole…and _extremely_ pissed off. 

“He’s okay,” Jared breathes, feeling the knot in his gut loosen a shred for the first time since this whole mess started. 

“Well, I wouldn’t go as far as _okay_.” Shepherd plucks the photo out of his hand and spins it to face the group, “That stuff they’ve got him bound with is reinforced steel. And even if he does manage to get out of that, because let’s face it – Jensen? Typical overachiever – getting out of there is gonna be impossible.”

Jared frowns. “Impossible how? What’s this guy’s deal? Why _Trickster_?”

“He calls it illusion.” Shepherd scoffs, rolling his eyes. “Mainly because he’s a pretentious little wanker,”

“It’s smoke and mirrors, Jared. That’s all it is,” Jeff says, rubbing his fingers together all casual-like as he lounges in his seat. “Nothing to worry about.” 

Jared thinks it might damper morale if he points out that they all look pretty worried. 

“Not just him, though.” Shepherd throws down another photograph and Misha shifts in his seat and sends a longing glance up at his plasma screen. 

This picture is of a stocky, dark haired guy, about Jared’s height. Cohen, Jared’s mind supplies. Sam. 

Once they’ve got Jensen untied, Jared’s going to ask him to kindly obliterate this guy’s stupid ever-changing face. 

“Matt Cohen. Speight’s new boy toy slash henchman.” Shepherd spins the photo round to take a glance himself. “Pretty little thing, isn’t he? My best guess is Speight brought him in to do the recon with beanpole here and kept him around for his face. He also seems to have a strict ‘no shirt’ uniform policy for this one, so look forward to that.” 

“Yee haw,” Chris grumbles sarcastically, as Danneel suddenly perks up to take interest in the photo getting passed around. 

“They’re the only ones there?” Felicia asks, taking the photo and passing it on without even a glance. “Two against five? Seems...unfair.”

“They’re not looking for a fight.” Shepherd props his hip against the table, his eyes pointedly going to Jared. “They’re looking for a trade.” 

“Maybe we should rethink this,” Jim says. “A trade? I mean, when has that ever been a good idea?” 

“It’s the only plan we got,” Jeff rebukes, and Jim looks at him levelly.

“Jensen would kill us if he knew what we were doing with him.” 

“Well lucky for us, Jensen’s not here.” Jared is, though, and he would very much appreciate not being talked about like he’s not sitting there in front of them, fully capable of making his own decisions. 

He pretends not to catch the uneasy glance Jeff and Jim share. 

“There is still one tiny aspect of this whole endeavour that we haven’t hammered out yet.” Felicia lifts her finger to draw their attention back to her, clearing her throat and shifting uneasily, rearranging the files in her arms. “I’ve been through this article with one of Jim’s fine-toothed moustache combs, three times. I’ve taken Jared’s research material to pieces; I’ve been through his hard drive twice…” 

“Hey!” 

She winces and looks apologetic. “Sorry.”

“And?” Chris prompts, still cradling a bow and arrow like it’s a security blanket. 

Felicia shrugs delicately and spills the files in her arms over the desk, gesturing to them forlornly. “And nothing. I got nothing,” She looks up at them with solemn eyes through her glasses. “I have no idea what’s in here that Speight would kill for.” 

Jared stomach knots unpleasantly as Felicia drops onto the stool beside him and leans in. “Although I did reinforce the firewall on your computer while I was in there. You’re welcome.” 

Everyone is reluctantly reaching for one of the files when a voice stops them. 

“Hold those horses, minions.” 

Shepherd already has one of the files open in his hands, his eyes trained on one of the pictures there. A photo, Jared can see from where’s he’s sitting. 

Shepherd spins the file so everyone can see the picture, a black and white wide shot of the old St. Thomas building.

“I think I might just go for the hat trick on ‘helpful and meaningful intel’ today.” 

Everyone looks at him expectantly. Chris jiggles the bow slightly. 

Shepherd smiles widely, and Jared’s reminded of one of those sharks they have in the snorkelling tanks in Disney World. 

They probably _won’t_ maul your child. But they _could_. 

“I believe I know what the big bad wants after all.

 

 

The warehouse turns out to be pretty nondescript. 

Jared is relieved, but Chris sighs when he sees it, like he was aiming for something a bit more challenging.

“They could have at least put a couple of guards on the perimeter to warm us up,” he grumbles after Danneel sets them down on the grassy hill overlooking the building. 

Jared could live for a thousand years, ride a thousand roller coasters, drive his car at thousand miles an hour and never feel quite as nauseated as he felt after his first flight. 

Turns out it’s not quite the same when you’re not strapped in with a bag of peanuts. 

Jared takes a gulp of air and tries to steady his roiling stomach as Chris continues mumbling, adjusting the Stetson resting on his head. “Fucking insulting is what it is.” 

“Don’t get cocky,” Osric says before disappearing on a gust of wind, and Jared feels his stomach lurch again as he squeezes his eyes shut. 

He knows what they do – in theory. He knows what they’re all about, knows all their tricks and quirks – in _theory_. Seeing it in real life, right before his eyes, makes Jared’s head feel a little like he’s on acid. 

Chris frowns and says something about _goddamn wind blower_ as he crouches in the grass and squints towards the warehouse. After a bit, his eyes shut and then there’s silence for about thirty seconds straight. 

Jared’s about to open his mouth to check if this is Chris’s version of sleeping on the job when Danneel’s neatly manicured hand wraps around his forearm and she smiles and shakes her head. 

Jared snaps his mouth shut just as Chris snaps his eyes open. 

“Two floors, three rooms. The back perimeter is closed off, two bodies plus Jensen.” Chris stands stiffly and tugs at the bow on his back. “They’re holding Jensen in the first room. Open plan. One way in, one way out. Easy access. No obstacles between them and the door.” He frowns, disgruntled. “Too easy. My spidey senses are all a-tingle.” 

“Easy, Cowboy,” Danneel croons, and for some reason her hair looks redder now. All loose and flowing in waves over her shoulder, down past her tight black shirt and black jeans. She looks like, well, like a superhero. And Jared’s having a hard time reconciling Danneel “The Vixen” who saves San Francisco from total destruction every other Tuesday with Danneel “His Friend” who always shares half his Fudge Brownie Sundae because Jensen prefers pie. 

“Chris will stay here and monitor the perimeter. Osric has eyes from the sky; one word and we’re coming in hot, ‘kay sweetie?” She taps the earpiece in her ear, mirroring the one Jeff pushed into Jared’s hand before they left. She shoots Jared a promising smile, the way he remembers his third grade teacher doing when he recited his three times table correctly. 

“Okay.” Jared smiles back in what he hopes is a reassuring manner, because they’ve had a good run, after all. 

It’d be damn shame if Jared’s the reason they all get blown to hell in the end. 

“You’re gonna be fine,” she says. Then she blinks and he’s in the dusty parking lot in front of the warehouse doors, and she sounds sure, if nothing else. “It’s gonna be fine.”

It’s not fine. 

The warehouse doors swing open easily enough when Jared pushes on them, but Jared has to give Chris his dues; they were idiots if they thought this was gonna be easy. 

“Uh…” Jared hopes that the static in his left ear is going to break into something helpful and wise very shortly because what he’s looking at is…well. It’s nothing. 

No Jensen, no Speight, no Cohen. 

Just a dusty, empty warehouse. The earpiece stays silent and Jared’s just about to tell Chris he maybe needs to squint a bit harder through that wall of his when the air starts to crackles around him and suddenly, the warehouse isn’t empty anymore. Jared blinks, his vision clearing. Blinks again. 

It takes him a minute to realise where he is. A flash of memory, of clumsy hands – the smell of drying paint thick in the air. 

He tries to think of the name of the guy standing to his left but can’t. Tenth grade Spanish class. Brock? Brady? 

He stumbles forwards, tells himself to keep moving, even as Misha’s laugh fills his ears. As Danneel waves at him from her perch on the stage steps, her hair just as long, just as red as it is now. 

_Just smoke and mirrors_ , he hears Jeff say in his head. But it doesn’t feel like smoke and mirrors. It feels real. He feels fifteen. He feels like he’s so far out of his depth that he can barely breath. 

“Jensen?” he yells, and the girl who’s busy painting Juliet’s tower scowls over at him in agitation. 

His feet quicken, but he doesn’t know where he’s supposed to go. All he can hear is his footsteps on the wooden stage floor as he crosses over to the steps and brushes past Danneel on his way down to…where? Out? Home? English class?

But Danneel’s tiny hand grabs his arm as he passes and Jared turns. Watches her face turn up to his in confusion. 

“Where’re you going, Jared?” she asks, but her voice is wrong. Too concerned. Too sweet to be the Danneel Jared knows. 

Jared snatches his arm back and stumbles down the last step. “Jensen,” he yells again, because he should be here. Even if it’s not him, not really. Even smoke-and-mirrors Jensen should be here, hanging those stupid lights, up on that stupid ladder. 

If it wasn’t for those lights, they probably never would have met. Who’s going to hang the lights if Jensen isn’t here? 

Jared shakes his head, trying to clear out the fog that’s clouding his judgement. 

“Jensen’s not here, Jared,” Smoke Danneel says solemnly, her lip protruding in a soft little pout as Misha barks out a laugh behind her. “Jensen’s dead.” 

Jared’s head pounds, but his gut says no. “No.” Jared says, and he plants his feet steadily. “No, he’s not dead.” 

The pout suddenly breaks into a blinding grin, all teeth, and Danneel laughs. “You’re right. He’s not. But you are.” 

White-hot pain bursts behind Jared’s eyes and he crumples to the ground. He blinks his eyes open, rolls enough onto his back to see Misha standing over him with a crowbar and nothing’s right. Nothing makes sense anymore. 

Then there’s blackness. 

 

 

There’s a ticking noise when he comes alert and everything’s blurry around the edges. He tries to thrust his hand out to prod Jensen. Tell him to turn the alarm off, five more minutes won’t make a difference, but his hand’s stuck. 

“Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey!” And yeah, that’s not Jensen. 

His eyes open of their own accord and blinding pain bursts through his skull and spills into his eyes. He squeezes them shut again and muffles a yell. 

“Yeah, that might smart a bit.” 

All Jared can see when he squints his eyes open again is a moustache and teeth. Fucking evil geniuses and their facial hair, Jared thinks even as he scowls at it. 

Speight steps back when Jared lifts his head up and he gestures to where Cohen is standing just behind him, idly swinging a crowbar. “The kid got a bit excited with the crowbar. I apologise – I should monitor his weapon play, it’s getting out of hand.” 

Jared doesn’t say anything because just past Cohen, just behind him, is Jensen. 

Bound and gagged and rough-looking sure, but it’s Jensen. _Real_ Jensen, and Jared feels every knot that had been twisting inside him for the past twelve hours dissipate. Just like that. 

“Jensen,” he releases in on an exhale, hears the word rattle around in his head, still foggy and heavy, and Speight kind of stutters in his movements and turns to face the man in question. 

“Oh sure, Jensen,” he says comically, rolling his eyes at Cohen, who, to be honest, isn’t really paying much attention other than to swing the crowbar a little harder and grin menacingly. “Don’t bother asking about me, I’m fine.” Speight raises his hand to his chest and peers over at Jared with faux sincerity. “I mean this kidnapping thing is harder than it looks, you know. Lots of planning and scheming, it’s exhausting!”

Yeah, this guy is a trip. He gestures to where Jensen is staring at Jared, his eyes bugging a little as he struggles with his restraints. 

“All he’s done is sit there!” Speight seems to deflate and he turns back to Jared with a smile. “But, that’s all we needed him to do, wasn’t it?” He shakes his head solemnly and takes a step closer to where Jared’s bound as Jared catalogues Jensen, scanning for every scrape and bruise and bone, just in case. 

Speight reaches out and pokes a bony finger into Jared’s cheek to pull his attention. Jared jerks his head out of the way, frowning up at him. 

“It sucks when this kryptonite thing goes both ways, don’t it?” Speight says with concealed glee. “I mean, great for us bad guys – makes the whole ‘trapping you’ thing easy as pie, let me tell you. On behalf of all of us, from the bottom of our hearts, I would like to sincerely thank any and all boneheaded super idiots who think falling ass over tea kettle in love is a good idea in regards to the general wellbeing of all parties involved. I mean…” Speight looks between him and Jensen exasperatedly and throws his arms up. “Guys? Does history not speak well enough for itself?” 

He shakes his head and meanders over to stand behind Jensen, resting his hands on his shoulders and rubbing them encouragingly. Jensen doesn’t try to shrug him off, just holds Jared’s gaze, and Speight meets Jared’s eyes over his head. 

“You do know I’m going to kill you, yes?” 

Jared figured as much. 

He knew going into this that there was a very real possibility that they weren’t getting out alive. That much is a given, and Jared doesn’t need any instruction. 

But if they are going to die, they’re going to die together. That’s better than Jensen dying alone in some bumfuck dirty warehouse in the middle of nowhere. 

At least, that’s what Jared thought. Now, he’s not too sure. 

“Not before I tell you what you want to know, though.” Jared smiles a little and hopes it comes off as ruthless. It must, at least a little, because Speight’s irritating smirk slips a little and Jared wishes Jeff was here to see it. “Right?” 

Speight’s smirk is way off now. He drops his hands from Jensen’s shoulders and his voice is void of its earlier gleeful tease. “And here I was thinking that fuck-tard Collins and his magic laboratory were the brains of the operation.” 

He knocks Jensen’s shoulder, hard, as he passes and Jensen gives a muffled grunt, his eyes having flown straight to Jared’s as soon as he’d opened his mouth. It’s similar to the expression he makes when Jared leans over to “whisper” his running commentary at the movies, “ _Shut up, asshole_.” 

“And I can’t tell you if I’m dead, right?” Jared’s on a roll, his voice just this side of panicked but able to pass for breezy if Speight isn’t paying too close attention. He’s a reporter, after all. He can lie with the best of them; fuck super smoke and magic mirrors. 

“Right again.” Speight laughs humourlessly and he’s close enough to Cohen’s side to reach out and knock him with his elbow. “Giving you a run for your money on the brain stakes, this one, huh cutie?” Cohen sways a little at the jostle, but his eyes are trained on Jared and Jared thinks that maybe he just heard a growl. 

“Tell you what.” Speight is grinning again, wide and feral. “How ‘bout you give him another couple of knocks across the brain box with your bar and see how many secrets fall out, huh?” 

Cohen gladly takes a step forwards looking like all his Christmases have come at once, and Jensen surges against his binds, his muffled yells coarse-sounding and strained as he thrashes.

“No need for that,” Jared says, halting Cohen in his tracks with the crowbar raised over one shoulder in preparation for a blow that Jared doubts he’d see the other side of. “I’ll tell you.” He grins past the shirtless shape shifter at Speight and makes sure to put all of his teeth into it. “Just tell me what you want to know.” 

Speight raises his eyebrow mockingly and juts his hip out to one side. Cohen pouts and slowly lowers the crowbar back to his side. 

“A bad guy monologue?” Speight drawls disdainfully. “You want me to monologue? Are you kidding me? What is this, fucking Scooby Doo? 

“Actually, I just wanted you to verify which _aspect_ of the story you want cleared up.” Jared elaborates, speaking slowly. His head feels like it’s on fire from the tips of his ears up to his crown, and his brain has been stuffed full of cotton balls. He figures he’s got about another ten minutes, tops, of effective consciousness in him. Might as well use it wisely. 

He seems to have gotten the bad guys’ attention, at least. 

“Is it the part where Alan found a way to bind superhero powers indefinitely? To make them completely powerless. To make them perfectly –”

Jared pauses on the word, because he doesn’t know Speight from Adam, but Jared knows superheroes. Knows them better than he knows himself. And he knows how much they loathe that word, “ _normal_.” 

In his periphery, he feels more than sees Jensen stop struggling, his eyes going dark and wide in his head. Yeah, Jared had been pretty shocked too by the revelations that spilled pretty hard and fast out of Shepherd’s lips once the old St. Thomas medical files jogged his memory. 

For a time travelling super sleuth, he has a surprisingly slow recall of long-term history. 

“Or maybe you’d like to rehash the moment you realised that Samantha Smith didn’t actually have the answers you needed? That Alan had wiped her memory of all of it before he died, to protect her. Because he knew scum like you would go after her if you ever found out! Sam didn’t have your fucking cure!” He meets Speight’s eyes dead on and hold them, smiling slowly. “And now there’s only one person alive who does?” 

It’s as simple as a formula, in the end. So small and indiscrete that it became embedded inside the files Sam had handed over to Jared and gone unnoticed. 

Just algebraic dribble that Jared had put down to some medicinal concoction, at the time. When he thought it was something more sinister than super sensory cures being conducted in the basements of St. Thomas in the 1970s. When Sam had confirmed that the flashbacks she was having in her nightmares weren’t of patients. They weren’t of treatments. They were something else. 

_Nothing good,_ she had told Jared, teary eyed, as she’d slipped him the last of the medical files she had pulled out of storage. She couldn’t remember writing them. Couldn’t make any more sense out of them than Jared could. _Car accident,_ she’d told him, _they call it retrograde amnesia._

She died thinking she’d done terrible things, Jared knows. She died before Jared could give her any answers. Before he could give her any of the truth she came to him searching for. 

Alan had trusted her with his secret – with something that he’d only ever entrusted to one other person, and that secret got her killed. Truth is funny like that, sometimes. 

Trust is even funnier. 

“That fucking time lord!” Speight yells suddenly, like Shepherd’s been lurking just out of earshot, laughing at him. 

Jared bites back a grin, because only one person could have told him all of this. Only one person who could have gotten himself out of Alan’s lab once he’d been captured with nothing but a silver tongue and a promise to play turncoat all those years ago. 

Shepherd owes Alan his life. Alan’s life was Jensen, in the end. And Mark Shepherd has been a great many things, over many a century, but he is nothing if not a man of his word. He will help them out when he can. Trust, Jared thinks; it’s a conundrum wrapped in an enigma. 

“Your fucking father,” Speight points an accusatory finger at Jensen, who looks a bit put out by all of the history having been flung out in the last thirty seconds, “your fucking father wanted to strip us! Wanted to ruin us! For what? To be like them?” 

He turns to Jared. “To be fucking _normal_ I’ll show you normal. I’ll show _everyone_ normal…when San Francisco’s pious little crew is stripped down to nothing but John Does and Joe Blogs, I’ll show everyone what _new_ normal will be taking over this pathetic little city…”

Jared quells the urge to roll his eyes, because Cartoon Network or not, they just can’t fucking help themselves with the goddamn monologues. As if the moustache on this one isn’t overkill enough. 

“Are you done?” Jared asks, taking a moment to note how pathetically awkward Cohen looks now, just standing with his crowbar dangling prone in one hand while his eyes jerk back and forwards between Speight and Jared. 

They probably hadn’t gotten as far as the actual _reasoning_ behind the kidnapping in their Team Evil orientation, Jared guesses. Cohen looks like the type of kid who just likes to beat the piñata, regardless of what falls out in the end. 

Jared might take the time to feel bad for him if not for the pounding of his own skull. 

Speight freezes for a moment before he nods. “Yeah, I’m done.” He takes a step closer to Jared, and that’s fine by Jared, because a step closer to Jared means a step away from Jensen. Cohen’s eyes jump to him, looming over Jared and smiling down. “And so are you.” His voice drops to a grave warning: “So give me the formula.”

Jared blinks owlishly. “Oh, I don’t actually have it.”

It takes a second for his words to register, for Speight’s stoic expression to crease into a frown and for Cohen’s eyes twitch, before he grins. “I just wanted to distract you so they could do that.” 

“Wh…?” The frown on Speight’s forehead deepens, but then he spins around to find Jensen standing upright and surprisingly sprightly for someone who’s been tied up in steel for half a day straight. 

Danneel leans oh so causally on the chair that Jensen had been sat in, the chains and gag abandoned on the floor on top of a prone and unconscious Cohen. She gives them a little wave as Jared feels a gust of wind ruffle the hairs on the back of his neck and his grin widens. 

Between one blink and the next, there’s a silver-tipped arrow through Speight’s left shoulder. Jensen reaches out to grab the arrow’s shaft and twists it in one fluid motion so that Speight has no choice but to follow with a pained scream, his back pressed against Jensen’s front. 

Speight’s laugh is high and panicked, but it still holds his characteristic arrogance. “A silver arrow through the shoulder?” He giggles, glancing down at the offending wound with what little manoeuvring room Jensen’s allowing him. “Are you kidding me? Not even close!”

“Not even meant to be,” Chris responds just as cockily, appearing out from behind Jared’s back with Osric in tow, slinging the bow back over his shoulder and grinning discreetly at Jared. _Asshole with his stupid shooting skills_ , Jared thinks grumpily. 

“I, for one, am excited to see how a _normal_ trickster handles _normal_ prison cell in a _normal_ correctional facility for the rest of his natural bound days,” Danneel croons, aiming a localised kick to Cohen’s twitching body when he groans. 

Chris steps up to Speight and flicks the end of the arrow, grinning when Speight flinches and then narrows his eyes in suspicion. “We’ve named the first batch of the formula, Speight Lite.” He glances at Jensen. “What d’you think?” 

Speight pales, his face falling in the first move of weakness Jared’s seen as Jensen nods. “Catchy. I like it.” 

Speight’s already started to spasm when Jensen pushes him towards Chris to take over, and Jared’s just about to ask him where the fuck he thinks he’s going, but his heads hurting too much and there’s a ringing in his ears and it takes him a couple more minutes to realise that he can move his hands again. 

Which is good, because he really needs to prod Jensen into turning off that stupid alarm clock. 

Turns out Jared only had about twelve minutes of consciousness left in him. 

 

 

“So, are you going to the deli on O’Farrell for lunch, or…?” 

Jared looks up from his position on his hands and knees in front of the washing machine and shoots a disbelieving glance over to where Jensen is sitting on the counter, swinging his legs back and forth. 

Jensen lifts his shoulder and tilts his head innocently. “What? I like their pastrami.” 

“I’ll show you my pastrami,” Jared mutters as he get back to his feet and sweeps past Jensen’s legs with a suggestive leer on his way to the dishwasher. 

Jensen pretends to gag as Jared drop to a crouch and presses his cheek to the tile, trying and peer into the 3 millimetre gap between the floor and the machine. 

“Jared?” 

Jared grunts out a response without actually lifting his head 

“Jay!” 

He sits up and spins, a couple of harsh curse words on the tip of his tongue, except he finds Jensen dangling his key ring from his index finger with an innocent smile on his face.

“It’s not heroic when you’re the one hiding them in the first place,” Jared says levelly, slipping the keys off his fingers and leaning in to press a lingering kiss to his lips. He feels Jensen smile back against him and it shoots down all hope he would have originally had of mounting a decent argument. 

“Well you know I’m not in this for the heroism.” Jensen grins wickedly when Jared pulls away and rolls his eyes. 

“So the deli…?” 

Jared sighs and swings his satchel over his head. “Yes, I’m going to the deli for lunch. It will be at approximately 12:45, as I have a conference call with Seattle at 12:15 that’s due to last around twenty-five minutes. I will most likely order the corned beef on rye, maybe with mustard, I haven’t decided yet, and I’ll send you an email to confirm.”

This time it’s Jensen who rolls his eyes, and Jared blows him a dramatic kiss from the doorway. “Anything else?” 

“Yeah”

Jared pokes his head back through the doorway, just in time to catch Jensen grin widely at him, and he has to take a second to consider the fact that he might have lost this. All of it. 

“I love you.” 

Jared grins back, and he knows Jensen’s waiting for him to roll his eyes and tell him not to suck up, because it’s not a phrase they throw around a lot. They don’t need to,. 

It’s always been kind of implied. 

Jared knows Jensen loves him the way he knows he hides his keys every morning to keep him around an extra five minutes. 

Jensen knows Jared loves him because he lets him. 

“I know,” Jared answers, ducking back out and heading for the door. 

He does. As surely as he knows Jensen would have done it – would have bound his powers without a second thought, if that’s what Jared had asked. 

The way Jensen knows Jared never would. 

They’re each other’s kryptonite. It’s how it is. It’s how it’s always been. Someone, someone other than Jared, of course, might even go as far as to say it was always meant to be that way. 

Jared thinks he still doesn’t believes in destiny. Destiny, fate, higher meaning; they’re all just words. Words said by people who trying to attach meaning to something they don’t quite understand, can’t quite wrap their heads around, but Jared’s never been afraid to go out and find truth amongst all the fiction. 

It’s his job, after all. 

“Have a good day, honey!” Jensen yells as Jared slips out the door, and Jared grins to himself and shakes his head, yelling back before the front door finishes closing. 

“I’ll catch up with yours on CNN!” 

Jensen’s laugh follows him all the way down the drive. 

Yeah, Jared doesn’t believe in destiny. But he _definitely_ believes in superheroes.

The irony isn’t lost on him. 

 


End file.
